On the treatment of acute rheumatism by salicylate of soda.

  • Sharkey, Seymour John (Sir)
Date:
1878
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the treatment of acute rheumatism by salicylate of soda. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    which I noted the time of its disappearance from the urine the shortest time was sixteen hours, the longest ninety-six hours. I have found it not only in the urine, but also in the blood, in the serum from blisters, and in the expectoration,—care being taken in the case of the latter to prevent any possible admix- ture of the medicine as it passed through the mouth. I have on several occasions tested the perspiration of patients whose system was saturated with salicylate of soda, and I have managed to get considerable quantities collected in test tubes for examination, but I have never detected evident signs of the drug in that excretion. This is the more curious as the perspiration is so remarkably increased by this treatment. It is not found in the fluid of hydatids from patients who are taking the salicylate at the time of tapping. Any one who has seen many cases of acute rheumatism treated by salicylate of soda must, I think, allow that its discovery as a cure for that disease is a triumph of empirical therapeutics, which has probably had but few parallels in the history of medicine. It has now had a fair and extensive trial, and to say that it far excels any other method of treatment would be to give the drug but scanty praise. It may rather be said that until the application of salicin and its compounds to the treatment of rheumatic fever, there was no drug which could be relied upon to shorten, to any great extent, its tedious course. Now, however, making due allowance for cases of failure, which do undoubtedly occur, not only- can cessation of the primary phenomena of the disease—pain and fever—be rapidly secured, but we likewise have good grounds for hope, that owing to the remarkable power which the drug possesses of curtailing the duration of the disease, those secondary affections of the heart which make acute rheumatism so serious, may be greatly diminished in number and intensity. In conclusion I have to thank the physiciaus, one and all, for very kindly allowing me to make use of their cases for the purposes of this paper.